Thin-film transistors (TFT) are used as one of the fundamental building blocks for current large-area electronics. Amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFTs usually serve as electrical switches for large-area liquid-crystal displays (LCD) and large-area flat-panel imagers (FPD); they are well known in the art of large-area electronics fabrication. A typical TFT has three terminals: gate, source, and drain. A majority of the charge carriers flow between the source and drain terminal through a semiconducting layer (referred to as an active layer). The degree of conduction of the semiconducting layer between the source and drain terminal is controlled by the potential of the gate terminal. The source and drain terminal is usually identified by the type carrier responsible for the main conduction current flow. Further, the TFTs can be made geometrically symmetric and therefore the distinction between source and drain is only made by its electrical potential difference and the type of charge carrier the transistor uses for conduction. Therefore, the two terminals are often referred together as the source/drain (SD) terminals. For the purpose of this application, the source and drain terminals are not separately identified to be distinct, but that is not intended to limit the scope of the application.
For large size radiographic imaging arrays, TFTs are typically used as a switching element in pixels within a radiographic imaging array. To those of ordinary skill in the art, it is immediately evident that there are numerous other possible choices for the switching elements as well as types of materials that can compose the elements. There is a need to improve performance characteristics of TFTs included in large-size radiographic imaging arrays, digital radiographic (DR) detectors and methods for using the same.